Lord Ratner

Why not? A supportive population, in fact an actively supportive population, is a part of the war machine. If we start down this road then we have to retroactively denounce Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tokyo, Dresden, etc... Easy to do when it's not our own brothers and kids being killed on the frontlines. If I have to choose between their civilians and our soldiers in a war they started, it's a pretty easy calculation for me. No country in the history of combat has spent as much energy, money, and blood protecting the civilians of their enemies, not even the US. War is ugly specifically because if requires the mass death of civilians.

He claimed the inflation rate is down. He's right. He's also abusing the public confusion regarding inflation rates to bullshit about the economy and protect his party.

This has been argued at the end of each and every saeculum. You think our differences are more polarized than say, the build up to the civil war? You think the abuses of wealth and power exceed the 1920's? I don't. I think it requires enough of a time gap that the people we could be asking about the differences, if there are any, are dead. They could give us, as a population, the perspective needed to keep from repeating the cycle. But that's exactly why it's a cycle. Because those who lived through it are no longer around, no longer in charge, so we now *have* to experience it for ourselves. Because we have not gone through what the previous generation went through that created the America we long for today. But we will, and if we win the war, again, then we will have another 80ish years of American unity and strength, at which point our great-grandkids will have holodeck arguments about how America is collapsing and it will never be the same again.

Is what new?

The Bari Weiss podcast interviewing him is more interesting than the article. But to anyone who's been following this for the last few years it's just going to be more of the same. Still, it is interesting to hear "from the horse's mouth."

The left has more retards. Full stop. However the right has been in the process of catching up probably since around 2008. As best I can tell that is when the corporatist take over of the government was successfully completed. Starting with the tea party and probably peaking with Donald Trump, the populist movement within the conservative right means that the historical metric of success for Republicans, money making, is being replaced. Sure there are retards who succeed in the business world, but by and large you're going to see more intelligent people if you start filtering by income. But now that the Republican party is more interested in bravado than income as a result of the decimation of the middle class, I suspect we will see Republicans reach retard-parity in fairly short order. Once that is complete and there are no longer intelligent mature people to run the government, we should get ourselves into a nasty shooting war in pretty short order. That will once again reinvigorate the American desire for competent leadership, but only after much blood has been shed.

If something is too sensational to be true, it's probably not true.

What's next, companies and billionaires are going to just *give* money to candidates in the hope they will get special consideration should the candidate win? Wait no, it's different because it's a PAC or campaign donation, right? You guys are trying too hard.

You're missing the point. It's always time to ask for accountability as long as the open shot is at a conservative. Then Democrats somehow go right back to ignoring the law. The law doesn't matter nearly as much as the equal application of said law. So: Incorrect. That's exactly how you solve it. If a law can't be or isn't equally applied, your best option is to ignore it completely or, even better, abolish the law. There is a reason Lady Justice wears a blindfold. Also, aggregating different arguments from a different people to falsely depict a shifting narrative is not a particularly strong debate strategy. There also not just a single reason why this is a problem. But it's not being asked for, is it? There's not just one investigator and one court in the land. No reason they couldn't have gone after a prominent Democrat at the same time. But they didn't. I didn't see a single prominent Democrat calling for the disqualification or imprisonment of Biden for his mishandling of classified, as proven by the investigation. - But he turned it all over! - He was honest in his deposition - Mike Pence had classified at home too - His house has security And hilariously, this all started with the non-prosecution of Hillary, who 100% attempted to cover up her crime, just like Trump. They *all* mishandle classified. Our enemies aren't getting an upper hand because of classified being kept in a garage by a Corvette or a basement at Mar a Lago. So let's just stop, and focus on policy. Trump is no more a criminal than national-level politicians have been for decades. And none of this "if you or I did that..." Nonsense. There has *always* been a different standard for the elites, regardless of party. So we suddenly care about class-based discrimination after literally thousands of years of human history, and we are going to start caring *only* when Trump runs for president? And we wonder why conservatives are distrustful now.

Created by a Republican doesn't make it right. It's a foundational principal of our legal system, though I'm sure no one is shocked to see New York go a different way. I don't even care that they are doing it from a political perspective. Trump is going to win and his ability to do whatever he wants will be reinforced by these clearly political prosecutions. Democrats always think they're so clever, like when they gave Trump a bunch of free publicity in 2016 because they were sure Hilary could demolish Trump. Oops. This too will backfire. But from a societal perspective, give me a fucking break. How many executives went to jail after the 2008 Financial Collapse? Did New York forget about that law at the time? Remarkable they couldn't find any fraud back then. Selective application of the law is the single best way to undermine it. Democrats are completely shocked that Republicans have finally embraced their situational-faith in the rule of law. Buckle up, because the more the Republicans embrace the tactics of the left, the uglier this election season will get.

This is all you need to know. That's it. Everything else is just noise. In every other Court in America you have to have standing to bring forward a case. Even if someone beats the shit out of you, you have to tell the authorities that you want to press charges, or nothing can be done. New York decided to press charges on behalf of a "victim" that did not feel victimized.

Well, in this era. They were doing it in the 40s-60s with the communism hunting, right?

I think if it was a year ago, abortion would have a lot more weight. But fortunately the process is going the way I had hoped, and each state is coming up with their own rules, which will never shut up the activists, but will absolutely shut up the voters, who do not make huge distinctions between state and federal law, as long as they agree with it. More voters will be satisfied with abortion law as a result of the Supreme Court's action. And whatever damage it did in the election in 2022 I think was overridden by the absolute dog shit slate of candidates that Trump got on the ballots. Of course, if Republicans try to make abortion a federal issue again, which some of them are, they'll get exactly what they deserve. (Sidebar, if anyone is interested we can start a new thread on my theory that in our lifetime contraceptives and abortion will be outright outlawed as more countries grapple with the painful results of population decline.) As to immigration, I honestly don't know. While I do believe there is an element of society, especially in academia, who are trying to covertly flip over the system in order to rebuild it in a postmodernist, pseudo Marxist fashion, I generally don't give those conspiracies the credit of wide scale participation at the political level. But the continued insistence of many Democrats to support this absolute dumpster fire at the border is truly mystifying. I know they see the same polls that show how unpopular open borders are, and I know they see the polls that show Donald Trump taking the lead in a matchup with Biden, so whatever reason they are refusing to adapt is not because of political expediency. That only leaves a true desire for an immigration disaster, one that would support the eventual "reset" of our Democratic capitalist society into a communist Utopia, or they simply cannot fathom the idea of supporting anything that the opposition supported before them. The fact that Republicans have been anti-illegal immigration simply excludes the possibility of Democrats ever changing their mind? Either way, immigration coupled with Joe biden's obvious and continued decline is going to cost them the election. Unfortunately that means Donald Trump is going to win, which while the 4 years of his presidency will probably be marked by great policy and less chaos, it is very likely he triggers the same response that leads to another idiotic Democrat winning the following election and undoing whatever good things he accomplishes. Or maybe not since he can't run again. Until the war kicks off at least. Then we restart the cycle.

Absolutely hilarious. Greg Abbott should be remembered for the single most effective political stunt in American history

You've either been extraordinarily lucky, where you weren't paying much attention to the people you were flying with. The 75-hour rule is not for everyone. It's for the weakest links in the chain. That's pretty much the case for all of those types of restrictions. I've only been in the airlines for 6 years and I've already seen people who could have probably used another 75, but definitely were not ready right out of the chute.

Dibs on the chick in the helmet with the huge knockers

A fond "fuck you" for this post. Now that I know what this gun is, I can't talk myself out of getting one. I'm not planning on the canebrake version, but it's simply irresistable.

Not really. But one that has existed over and over and over throughout history. We are in the unpleasant phase of the cycle. In another lifetime whatever societies emerge from this conflict will find themselves in another.

If they really believed it there would be martyrs. There aren't. It's just team sports. That means yes, they will cheat and lie and steal (just like in team sports), but until they are shedding blood all the talk of an existential risk to democracy is just political cheerleading.

Yeah it's almost like the Nazis didn't invent art. How many kids started drawing swastikas without ever seeing the symbol before? Hell, they are still all over Indonesia.

There are two ground controllers at O'Hare. .75 and .9 if I remember correctly. Either way, there's two, *and* a metering frequency. Are you thinking of JFK?

Yes, California does. Just like a medieval castle, outsiders are allowed to enter under the declaration of parlay, in order to petition the homeowner. Anyone under the protection of parlay must be offered food and protection for the duration of their visit, lest the honor of the homeowner be impugned at Royal Court.

I actually really liked that movie

Is the army really doing a better job? That's a real question. As far as I've seen the people in all services who make it to the top today are at best, morons, and at worst, hypocritical Yes-men. Although I admit I don't seem to see much about the Navy, so maybe they're doing better? It's very hard to tell if someone is good at something when you're not doing the thing. And we are not in a war, so it's pretty hard to pick out good wartime leaders. We are in a time of massive administrivia, and so unsurprisingly the military has no problem picking out the best paper pushers.

I was living in England when all the liberals in America were talking about a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers. I remember saying then that they were just going to cost a bunch of people their jobs, because at the time Europe had the self-ordering kiosks that had not yet made their way to America. Now you see those in damn near every store.